Have you noticed? The 90s are absolutely everywhere right now. This time it feels different. It feels sincere. Ryan Murphy has put JFK Jr and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy on our screens and we cannot look away. We are for the eighth time, rewatching Sex and the City as though Carrie’s shoe budget might contain an answer to something. We are recommending Nancy Meyers films to our kids. Something is happening.
The question is: why? Why the 90s, and why now?
Here’s my theory and I say this as someone who has spent the last two years building a swimwear brand entirely shaped by the decade so bear with me. I think the 90s represent something that feels genuinely radical right now: low stimulation. Go back and watch anything filmed in that era. The grain of the film, the warmth of the palette, the slightly soft focus. It doesn’t demand anything of your nervous system. There are no jump cuts. No notifications. No hyper-saturated colour grading calibrated to compete for your attention. It’s warm and unhurried, and it feels like switching the lights down after a very long day.
Then there’s the fashion. And this is where I get personally invested, because the fashion of the 90s is what sent me down a rabbit hole I have never entirely climbed out of. The cuts were simple, attainable, slightly oversized, and quietly interesting. Pull up socks. Headbands. Bright colours worn with basics. The sporty luxe thing that Princess Diana elevated into an art form. There was a tongue-in-cheek quality to it. A willingness to mix humour with chicness.
When we were developing Matchbox Bikini, I spent hours with old magazines from the 90s actual print copies at my mother-in-law’s. I was looking for swimwear cuts specifically: the proportions, the way the fabric sat, the silhouettes that seemed effortless. We were thinking about Calvin Klein basics elevated with pops of colour and that particular 90s ability to make simple shapes feel iconic. What emerged was a collection that sits somewhere in conversation with the decade without being a costume of it.
We’ve always been drawn to that sporty, irreverent quality the supermodels had in the early 90s, a girl in an oversized knit, pulled-up sports socks and a headband. Fun. A bit cheeky. We’re obsessed with a woman who takes her clothes seriously but doesn’t take herself too seriously. That, incidentally, is also the woman who opens a matchbox and finds a bikini inside.
We don’t actually want the 90s back. We want what the 90s felt like: warmth, simplicity, things that were fun without being frantic. A little more texture. A little less noise. A bikini that fits in a matchbox and makes you smile when you open it.
If you ask us, that’s a very reasonable thing to want.
FROM THE ARCHIVES — HOW MATCHBOX BIKINIS ARE CUT
Every Matchbox Bikini is drawn from 90s swimwear silhouettes: the structured triangle and the slight retro-sportiness that sits somewhere between a Helmut Lang campaign and your mum's holiday photos. We found the references in old issues of Vogue and Elle magazine. The shapes haven't dated because they were never particularly trend dependent to begin with. That's the 90s for you.